It’s another beautiful morning. You wake up feeling refreshed from a night in the dream bed at the inn. You look around the room and consider how nice it would be to be able to rearrange the furniture, knowing that unless another neighborhood expansion is built or you are gifted a billion gil, your chances of home ownership are next to nil.
You sigh, setting those thoughts aside, and step out into the city streets of Limsa Lominsa, Ul’dah, or Gridania (or Kugane or Ishgard maybe, but let’s be real, no one uses those inns) to find yourself flooded with advertisements.
These are not ads for the latest fashions or discounts on iron bars at the smithing guild, though. No, these ads are for a party later tonight or a party starting now, or in some rare cases, a party continuing on from the previous night. Without fail, if you go to a major city you will be hard-pressed to find a time of day when 10 minutes can go by without a wall of text being flung out into every direction as a runner scrambles to teleport to their next shout burst zone before they can be told to go away.
Many ads border on being inappropriate but hold back just enough that they will be allowed to sneak past the censors. Many more offer something else, though, that carries a slight tinge of hope for the cash-desperate; the opportunity to be the recipient of a large prize.
Expensive mounts, mountains of gil, and sometimes even plots can be won at a lot of the places that runners spam endlessly about. For those willing to go hang out at such a place, winning a drawing can be a huge change in quality of life. The allure is real, and as much as people gripe about the ads, I would wager a sizable portion of the population has considered going out to a club in hopes of walking away rich.
It is no secret that everyone is tired of shout ads. Complaints about them have persisted heavily for over a year at least, though perhaps longer. Certainly, the addition of DC hopping only added to the problem. Even venue owners who employ shout runners privately hate them, according to anonymous sources. Yet, that does not stop them from advertising ad nauseam.
Entire Discord factions are built and maintained on advertising relationships where two or more entities agree to give exclusive advertising rights to the clientele and followers of each other. Some contain these to a single channel, others separate their partners into their own channels. The sad truth that many tend to not talk about is these sections are often the first to be muted by new members to a Discord community.
Despite all this, owners will fight tooth and nail to claim that advertising works, that it brings in people, and that it helps venues thrive. There is no consideration for the types of people being brought in, though, nor does it take into consideration the damage being done to the venue community as a whole. Considering the “content drought,” desperation in attracting customers is understandable, but it does not excuse the draining of the proverbial well.
First, let us consider the people who are inclined to pay attention to advertising. It may very well be true that the promise of potential wealth will bring people in the door but what kind of atmosphere does this contribute to? What is a venue meant to be? If your only goal is to have a high headcount, then please disregard everything because prizes will get you the numbers you seek. However, for anything beyond the shallowest of interactions, giveaways are toxic to the health of a social gathering. Like it or not, if your main attraction is that you will pay out, people are not going to come for your fun events.
This is not meant as a reprimand of those who go to places to win prizes. That in itself can be fun, for sure, and with winnings a person can open a lot of doors previously closed to them. Lord knows, when I have any amount of gil the Market Board usually vacuums it away in a few days. I get the appeal. Still, from a social aspect, this type of participation is not healthy for those who want something more than standing around throwing out random numbers.
To give some perspective, imagine you wish to run a raid group. You just barely have enough people to make the run, but to get in you need just one more person. So you beg someone to join. You tell them not to worry, the group is experienced and they will take care of everything, just sit in the back and be a body. The run is a little rocky, but in the end, the team completes it. Everyone rolls on loot, even the new person, why not?
How long would operating like this last? One time might be fine. What if the new person gets a valuable prize, though, and the other members who put in all the work really wanted it, and had been trying for months? What if some of the group resent having to carry this person who adds nothing to the dynamic? What if it causes a rift, and one of the working players leaves? Maybe another free ride member is added to the team to replace them. And now it’s even harder. More and more want out of the group. It is not a sustainable system.
And yet, this is the type of person that venues, the supposed social clubs of Eorzea, bring in to act as guests for an opening when they put out these ads. At best, they silently sap the energy from a corner of the room until a drawing is done for the night. At worst, they can detract from an atmosphere by interjecting in a manner that is out of what regular customers would consider standard for the place. Either way, the only positive for the venue is an increased headcount, a must for any owner wishing to show off just how many people like them in the club photos.
Illusions of popularity aside, surely this is a harmless action, right? People should be left alone and if they want to essentially pay people to hang around near them it isn’t really anyone’s business. This is actually a sentiment I agree with, despite the hopefully obvious sarcasm I laced it with. So why lace it with sarcasm? Because this type of action is damaging to the community at large.
A piece of advice often requested from venue owners is “How can I get people in the door,” often following “I just opened my first venue.” New venue owners want to learn how they can make their freshly realized dream into a hub that many clubs showcase themselves as in promotional photographs. The typical replies range from “be unique” to “be yourself” and end like that. Simple platitudes that may make you feel warm to read but ultimately provide little in terms of actionable ideas. No one wants to tell them the ugly truth, which is if you are not willing to spend, you should just give up any hopes of people coming by now.
Giveaways have gone on for so long that we have conditioned the venue-going audience into not wanting to waste time on anything that does not provide at least a raffle of some sort. Advertising has been so obnoxious that anyone who might have been interested has long learned to tune out shouts. Party Finder is a nightmare of block letters and duplicate ads. What other avenues are there to get word out about a new spot?
One mistake I see repeated time and time again is that of smaller communities letting in larger clubs as advertising partners, hopeful that they might gain followers through an already vibrant scene. In reality, though, it acts as a nuisance to any of the patrons the smaller community may have brought in on their own. Consider it from the perspective of a follower. If they found you through all the muck of the major clubs, chances are they are aware of these big places and wanted something different. Now, without warning, you’re telling them they should support these other larger places. Would you not have concerns over this new direction?
The only other real option is to, of course, join every other club and invest heavily. You will not be building a social community, but odds are you were not going to create a very large one anyway. At least the bandwagon has a lot of people riding. Still, where can you even start with that?
The bar is exceptionally high to get into the popularity contest that is the contemporary venue scene. To begin, you must have a robust staff. Consider how many people you might want to operate for an evening, then triple it. Venue staff are hard to hang onto; people have lives and sometimes being a staff at one place might just not be worth it. You are going to lose people, and sometimes people will flake. This is the reality of the situation.
Staff dropout can be mitigated with a high rate of pay, but with many places offering an entry-level role at around 300,000 gil an hour, it may be difficult to sustain. Still, you also need to consider that you will need to be open for several hours a night, likely more than once a week to build a following. If you open for 3 hours twice, that’s nearly 1 million gil a person you bring on, assuming everyone is at the same rate. Hopefully, you have also included the shout runners in this calculation, possibly up to 3 for the major data centers. Don’t be stingy! Everyone is always hiring.
You will also need to get DJs, but remember, if you are doing this for popularity you need to have the ones that come with followings. It is unlikely they will bring many people to your club, but more eyes will see it on Twitch at least. Get ready to pay for that privilege. You could chance an unknown DJ, but they still expect to get paid, and if you’re not doing this with concern for the money, should you risk it?
Finally, the giveaways! If it has not been made abundantly clear by this point, without a giveaway, nothing else matters. People can get DJs, shout ads, and bored staff anywhere. They come to your place for the chance to win succulent cash prizes. The lowest of the low offer 10 million in gil and prizes minimum per night so steel yourself for the hit to your pocketbook.
At this point, you are looking at a very expensive night to join the popular kids in the venue scene. Working the Market Board fairly regularly might be able to get you close to funding a single night like this in a week, but with other commitments, it likely will end up ruinous. Surely there must be a way to offset some of the costs?
Most clubs offer VIP programs where they encourage patrons to pay for perks. It might be tempting to go all in on this right away, but remember a random person off the street likely doesn’t care about free drinks for a month when they just want to walk out with extra gil. You probably need to wait for this to happen. Another strategy is to do a split raffle, where everyone who buys a ticket can be entered to win and you scrape off the top. Some do a 50/50 split, but with places offering 90/10, it can be hard to compete if you take too much for yourself.
So let’s skip the line again. We have invested this much, what is one more? You want to be popular, don’t you? There are unspoken secrets in the Venue trade, though most are not exactly a secret. The only sure way to fast-track success as a venue is to pay, and sometimes that means breaking the rules. While not openly admitted, many have professed behind closed doors how they or the owners of the venues they work at have participated in Real Money Trading (RMT) to keep operations running smoothly. Is such a thing possible? Yes, obviously.
A hobbyist statistician calculated that over the course of 4 days surrounding the New Year, between approximately $3200 to $3500 was spent on gil. That comes to a total of nearly 8 billion gil in just 4 days. What is this gil being used for? As mentioned, we are in a content drought. The population is not particularly high, housing plots are few and far between, and gear is basically as top-tier as it is going to get with prices being reasonable for most people. Big purchases such as FC plots from current owners might be a reason, but what are the odds that all that money was being spent to buy housing plots at year’s end, especially when considering those days are primed for big parties?
There is something very wrong in the venue scene. Obviously, the need for attention was always a factor in running a venue. Most people want attention. I want attention. I love writing and taking on these projects, but it would be dishonest to say if no one read anything I wrote I would feel as enthusiastic about it sometimes. People want to run FCs for attention, lead raids for attention. It is not always the primary concern, but it is there. Venues are no different. What is different, though, is that as a whole, the Venue community has shifted from appreciating attention to craving it to the point of its own detriment.
The other day, I watched as someone loudly and publicly denounced all things to do with Venues, lambasting the community for all its faults, claiming it was at a new low. They were not wrong, but the thing is, this person did not leave, nor is it likely they will keep to their word. They have made similar outbursts in the past, and will likely continue the cycle into the foreseeable future. Those in the Venue community might think you know who I am talking about, but the thing is, I have a whole page of people I have seen do this, and expect the list to grow. This is a common action in the Venue community because at its heart, a tirade like that is just another cry for attention.
The thing about attention is it can be addictive. You may think you are above it and maybe you are right, but until you get a taste, it can be hard to know for sure. I have had issues with it in the past, and at the time I thought nothing of it, but in reflection, the times when I felt like I was in the popular crowd were times when I really disliked how I was acting. Addiction is dangerous. It sucks you in and has you craving more and more. If you are not equipped to deal with it, it can ruin you, especially when it starts costing.
I do not expect this article to reach the target audience. I know our readers tend to be less aligned with the Venue scene. Perhaps this can act as a rationale for the nightmare levels of shout ads we all must endure. For those out there who can see themselves on this path, though, I hope you will consider taking a step back, maybe get help if you need it. There is no sense in bleeding yourself dry for a digital club full of silence.
